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“If the tree wasn’t in the way, one of us would have got shot,” said Kierra Carter.

She said she was just curious at first when her boyfriend saw his ex-girlfriend and four of her friends at the mall. She said the group started staring at her boyfriend and she wanted to know why.

“He, um, got out of his car, was walking around to, like, behind the trunk, and that’s when they started shooting, more than 12 times,” Carter said. “They hit the tree, and the bark was coming off the tree.”

Overland Park police said it’s amazing that no one was hurt.

“You never know who’s going to be there and who it’s going to hit,” said Officer Gary Mason, of the Overland Park Police Department. “In this case, we got lucky, and we still don’t know where those ended up.”

Police released surveillance photos of five people they think were directly or indirectly involved in the incident and said they’d like to speak with all of them.

Carter said she’s thinking how grateful she is that her young daughter wasn’t hit. Carter is also 33 weeks pregnant.

She said she hopes police catch up with the shooters, and the justice system holds them accountable.

“It’s not like they wanted to scare us. They were really trying to shoot at him, or us,” she said. “For that to happen, to go way beyond and put her life in danger, that’s a problem for me. It’s just got way out of hand.”

Anyone with information was asked to call Overland Park Police or the Crime Stoppers TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477.